• by Steph Sebbag , March 11, 2010

A marketer creates a unified, powerful and compelling message. Then one shop does the spots. Another does the print. Someone else handles digital. Add it together, and often the results are fragmented. The message is muddled and the impact on consumers is compromised.

With the world increasingly saturated with advertising and marketing messages, it is critical for marketers to unleash tightly executed conceptual creative across media platforms.  In order to cut through the clutter and present a unified message to consumers, it is essential for marketers to present truly integrated campaigns. One message. One creative. Multiple platforms. 

The trend toward multiplatform creative integration -- using a single full-service creative shop to conceive and execute complementary elements of a single campaign, including print, broadcast and interactive -- is gaining momentum.  More brand marketers need to head in this direction.

Consider Apple and TBWA's Media Arts Lab. This shop handles all creative for the brand and has helped Apple become one of the premier brands in the world, with the street cred, customer love, industry respect and hard sales figures to back up the claim.  Not only does the digital creative for the iPod, for example, complement the product's television ads, but it also meshes with creative for other Apple products, strengthening the entire brand.

Apple's arrangement with Media Arts Lab is the extreme example, but your brand will benefit if you think more holistically about your approach to creative, rather than keeping your work in digital, print, broadcast or experiential advertising silos.  Developing multiple elements of a campaign in one place only pays dividends when the agency has the capability to not just deliver, but deliver excellence across platforms. 

Caprica, the much buzzed about Battlestar Galactica prequel that premiered on Syfy Jan. 22 is an example of a consistent and effective cross-platform campaign designed by my agency, bpg Advertising.  The striking key art - featuring the lead character holding an apple with a bite out of it - was designed to grab potential viewers' attention and pique their curiosity, whether they see the iconic image taking over an entire side of a building or in rich media on a computer screen. 

When a brand carves up its advertising work between too many single-specialty shops, the powerful connectedness of a streamlined brand is often lost in translation. This is especially true as the growth of digital media options necessitates multiple digital or interactive components within a single campaign, in addition to the full gamut of traditional media. 

Interactive advertising is no longer the ugly stepchild to print and broadcast, and a well-designed interactive concept can deliver an unprecedented return on investment. 

Sometimes, a brand will try to achieve a cross-platform effect by passing along assets created for the rest of a campaign to a specialty digital shop, but for a range of reasons -- perhaps the art was not created with interactive applications in mind, or the copy fails to make the leap from building-side to pocket-size -- the final product, and the overall success of the campaign suffers.

With audiences fragmenting by the day and the world becoming increasingly saturated with advertising and marketing messages, marketers cannot afford to make multiplatform marketing an afterthought.  The superior agencies, the ones that will dominate in the future, are able to unleash powerful conceptual creative that works everywhere. 

One message. One creative. Multiple platforms.